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Comment by darth_avocado | Hacker News Reader

Towards the end, the solution offered is supposed to be a bigger multiplier of the DOGE cuts, but then they sneakily include “over 10 years”. I was bought in into the narrative until then. Please don’t do that.

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Usually I would agree, but the amount of distortion depends on what portion of DOGE savings are one-off (eliminating grants and contracts) and what portion are recurring annually (workforce reductions).

If DOGE savings are one-off then it would be fair to present alternatives according to their lifetime debt impact, since the presented DOGE numbers would already be "lifetime."

And TFA states "Please note: only grants and contracts posted on the doge.gov website with receipts are counted towards the total saving value. For this reason, the total savings value on the doge.gov website may appear larger, however due to the lack of supporting receipts, this value is unverifiable." So it looks like DOGE's recurring savings are (mostly?) not included here since they are undocumented.

I understand that the total impact should be compared, which is fine. But I take issue with how the narrative is presented. If your point is to convince me that me cutting down my smoking habit is far better than me canceling my car purchase, then you need to be a little more upfront and clear about the fact that it will take almost 30 years worth of cigarettes to have a similar impact.

It's also slightly deceptive to describe the DOGE cuts to USAID programs as "one time cuts." This is technically true, but it implies that the programs will be replaced with different programs with a similar cost, which likely isn't the case considering the Trump admin is trying to axe USAID permanently. The actual savings are whatever USAID's budget would have been had it continued to exist.

Yeah, the fair way would be show DOGE estimates for 10 years as well

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